Empty Vessels

The park is full of bodies. Grace leans back, takes in the scene, feels her elbows dig into the blanket and grass below. She watches couples slant into each other and the singles into no one else at all. They all seem to huff electric smoke and drink wine from plastic cups. Bicycles and bottles lay disheveled throughout. They talk about their phones. About coverage and networks and cost. They show them to themselves and palm screens that glow like tiny campfires in the night. Grace picks at some cheese, some crackers. Traces carrot sticks through dip. The sky turns to plum. Buildings stretch tall from all around. A few windows shed soft yellow light and she catches the occasional shadow pass from behind. She wonders at those lives. Wonders about the rooms and secrets shuttered within. Beside her Clara and Jonathan gossip about some club kid caught slumming, the bounced checks and counterfeit bags. I knew it, they say. A few hours pass and heads become lighter and soon the park empties, the vast lawn left dimpled and pressed. They walk home along sidewalks long ago chewed to dirt, past the rowhomes buckled and boarded. Into the land of cheaper rents and uncollected debts, a place better left not to linger.  

Grace catches the 73 bus that will eventually leave her at work. She takes to the back, likes how the seats there align and center to the windows. Sometimes there is grease on the glass and she imagines the forehead or hand of the print left behind. She studies the creases and lines and tries to intuit fatigue or sadness or change in luck. One time she found dozens of tiny lips kissing the surface, as if reminder to some past lover. Outside the air is soup. Heavy and thick and with each stop the doors of the bus yawn open and close and let slip in lungfuls of humid breath. They’re calling it a heatwave. A weather app tells her to limit or reschedule strenuous outdoor activities. To stay hydrated.

At a red light she catches the flash of a woman through an open doorway. Grace notices her skin. The paleness in the dark. The woman is topless, dancing on an empty stage. A sign on the building reads Bottom’s Up and the lettering is blistered and curled as though a snake consuming its tail. Grace watches a woman in a hijab buying melon from a fruit stand, an old flip phone tucked between her cheek and wrap. She sees a group of boys peddling tricked out bicycles and weaving between cars. All around the sidewalks are full, bodies searing in the sun. They are glistening and slick and there is brown skin everywhere and Grace thinks to herself how lucky she’ll never feel that heat.    

Alone at night she scrolls and swipes and scrolls and swipes and drags her fingers a billion times over the same worn trails. She watches music videos, reads the comments. She reads things like amazing tune or this song once saved my life. On some other site somewhere else someone says this is what happens when the animals are let free. She watches porn. A woman thick with muscle twitches and rubs an enormous clit. She searches “full moon august.” She reads about a girl held captive for two years in some small space in some small town. In India a man bought a shirt made entirely of gold.

She meets up with Clara at a coffee place near them both. The room is sparse and industrial. Hard metals and concrete floors. Air plants hang from corded rope. They order expensive drinks. The ones with foam and dairy substitute creamers, and Clara begins in about her nanny family. About the foraged wooden blocks for the kids. About the husband, how he treats his wife.

“He’s sleeping with everyone,” she says. She drags her syllables like some toy train tied and strung behind.

“And she has no idea.” Not a fucking clue, she says, and Grace nods along, sympathizes. She goes back to one night as a child and listening in to her mother on the telephone. Her mother told the person on the other end he doesn’t love her anymore, that he said there was no longer connection. Her mother spoke this very softly and hushed, the words like moths fluttering to light. Grace had been upstairs on the second line and what she remembers most is feeling slightly electrified. The sensation of fingers and teeth and scalp suddenly vibrating. The pins and needles.

“She doesn’t know?” Grace asks.

“Of course she doesn’t know, she’s too much in her head. Drones on about Montessori and EMDR therapy, pushes out her perky tits.” Clara takes a small sip of coffee, leaves some shade of burgundy or oxblood glossed on the cup.

“She has nice tits?”

“Museum quality,” she says. “The best.”

They move on and Grace tells her about a few books she’s been reading, some music she’s been listening to lately. The videos she’s been watching and the one that spoofs on that meme going around. They pick up and put down their phones and pick them up again. Pulses and push notifications purr like kittens rubbing into legs. Grace talks about her visit to the Korean day spa. Of being stripped and scrubbed and vaginally steamed. She mentions a party happening tomorrow night at a place somewhere just outside the city. An artist’s colony or compound or some type of commune. She’s not sure. She said there should be fields and crickets and cooler air and that Jonathan is driving. She asks Clara to come. That she’ll send her a text later and it’s decided and they walk outside and hug until finally peeling apart slowly and viscous like two cells dividing.

Grace slips through the heat of the afternoon. She ducks into small storefronts and drifts among darkened slabs of shade. She passes a group of older Mexican men sitting outside a tire repair shop. They all seem to be wearing t-shirts given away at ballparks or bank promotions. The fabrics are thin and amnesiac. The men say hola, mami and como estas and Grace smiles and says bien, bien. She lifts her phone and mimes a picture and the men all nod. She stands back and taps the screen and then taps it once again. She sorts through filters. Adjusts contrast and structure. She hands the phone to the men and they speak rapidly and laugh and pass it among themselves. Much later she’ll notice the walls of her apartment smudged and stained, her fingers dark with grease. Ovals and half-moons scattered random like symbols of some lost language.

That night she pours herself vodka tonics heavy with lime. She posts a few things, deletes a few others. She pulls and refreshes. Her phone chirps with every new comment and like. Outside the sound of freeway rush hums from far away. AC units rattle against the heat. There is rapid tapping from the street below, firecrackers or some violence finally mete out. She seems to remember that gunshots crack. She searches “car engine backfire” and learns it’s a rare phenomenon in modern vehicles. She begins to feel very drunk and texts that someone is shooting. Bubbles of caution and advice float in. She is told to avoid windows, to lie flat in the tub. To be aware of ricochets. She is all nerves and soon everything is vodka and blur. In the morning she finds her phone, screen down and dead under the sofa. The coffee table is ringed and stained, her glass having been like some gavel striking throughout the night. Too bright sun bleeds into chiffon curtains, a sentence on the day. Her tongue feels coated in fur. She finds her charger, plugs in and waits.

The day is feverish with dust. Emptied lots and streets all coated in film and fried on scorching hits of Fahrenheit doses. Circulars gone sallow stalk along curbs. Grace meets Clara at the bodega, buys some water heavy with electrolytes. She grabs a soft pretzel to go and brushes away the salt before each bite. Her eyes are rust. Outside they wait for Jonathan to sweep them from the city and soon they’re among pastures and trees and slow moving rivers. They pass along fields cut for hay and smelling slightly acrid. They listen to playlists and glide hands atop quickening streams of air. Stopping at a country store they buy fried chicken and red potato salad thick with dressing and eat while leaning against the car. They talk about the Amish boy at the register and Jonathan imagines taking him away on some sordid Rumspringa.  Of rocking the buggy in cornfields at night and Clara tells him to pick up some plaything in the city instead. Dress him in starched whites and tie him with suspenders to the bed. Make a little sin.  

They return to the road and Grace gives directions from her phone. She watches them as an arrow on the screen, like some planchette divining their path. They pass houses large and small and sad little trailers and count the artifacts scattered among the lawns and lots. The toy kitchen sets and toppled charcoal grills. Birdbaths with basins run dry. Lawn gnomes and shredded tarps.

“Where is this place?” Clara asks. They had lost cell reception a few miles back and were driving along a series of rutted dirt roads. Jonathan tells them to watch for balanced piles of rocks. That it’s an environmental artist throwing the party. That he’s created a series of intentional works.

“Think of Zen type shit,” he says. “It’s a movement. It’s all stone and wood and soil.”

Soon they start seeing the rocks. Various shapes and sizes and all balanced into ornate columns. They spot enormous boulders, one piled onto the other, and groupings of flat stones precariously set. Undulating mounds of soil warp across the land. Grace points to a driveway and they turn and climb and finally twist into an open clearing. Beyond is a little cabin at the base of a hillside, a few other structures scattered nearby. They park and pile out, stretch away the drive. They search for signals and hold their phones to the sky. The air is cool and thin and smells like pine and Grace is reminded of being in the city, of the absence of this. She thinks of the streets, of the pace and predators and pull to flee but collared instead like some animal to a pole. She wonders if she’ll ever snap the leash, if she’ll ever slip the noose. She thinks of joining a cult or gang or hiking the Appalachian Trail. Changing her name to Moonbeam and boiling instant ramen noodles over butane flame. Sleeping bare under the stars at night. She wanders over to one of the outbuildings. Rough cut lumber and layers of tarpaper roof. She tries the door, steps into dim light and still air. A collection of pickaxes and shovels pile in a corner. An enormous spider web hangs across a dusted window, black flies caught and suspended like tiny balls of lint. Under a workbench a small refrigerator hums. Grace pulls her phone and takes a photo. Wonders about wifi.

She joins up with Jonathan and Clara and they head for the cabin. Inside are a few people they know, kids from the city. Baristas and bartenders and the ones with trust funds who seem to be always around. Grace spots a boy she made out with a few weeks back talking to an older man and Clara elbows her in the ribs, whispers it’s him.

“I know, I know,” Grace says. She says be cool and begins to walk away, feels Clara grip her arm.

Clara says “No, dummy, that’s him. That’s the guy. That’s the artist.”

The man is taut and lean and muscular in the way of macrobiotics and lotus pose. A mole sits beneath one eye, dark and sized like a nickel. It reminds Grace of a burl from a tree. She asks if she’s sure and Clara tells her that she looked him up, checked him out online. That his work is highly sought. The man is listening to the boy and Clara steers them to the conversation. The boy is talking about shadows. He says something about considered interventions. Grace smiles and nods and swipes at her phone. Clara does the same.

The man glances, tucks a thick rope of hair behind an ear. “There’s not much use for those out here,” he says. He says they’re in a dead zone.

“Just empty vessels, you know?” 

Clara says oh, right, and pockets the device. He asks them if a thing can have status absent any signal, without the push of noise behind. A sail without the breeze. He asks if need exists free of our desires. Clara becomes very nervous, starts to ramble. She mentions cell towers designed to mimic trees. About how they trigger memories of model train set scenery. Of the scrubbed vegetation and bristled evergreens. The tiny figurines clustered among depots and parks.   

“You might consider installing of those towers out here,” she says. “Diversify your portfolio. Branch out a bit.”

The man gives her a look and softens, says his name is Sheldon. He smiles crooked and Grace notices a front tooth capped in gold. She wonders about that. He invites them to take a walk among the real things. Among the bark and branches. The piles of moss. Clara turns to Grace, raises her eyebrows.

“What’s the insect situation like?” she asks. “What’s our chance of infectious disease?”

“We don’t do malaria,” Grace adds. “Zika and Lyme and Dengue are out too.”

Sheldon shakes his head, says he’ll bring the DEET. That they’ll be glowing by the time they’re back and Clara says it’s settled then. They gather supplies, fill a backpack with beer and pretzel rods and plastic bottles of water. They meet at a path that winds among a field of unkempt grass. Sheldon keeps a few paces ahead and points out the various ferns and berries and imprints of animal tracks. He shows them piles of scat threaded with fur. In the basin of a small gully they stop at a stream, the waters pooled and swirling behind a dam of stone and mud and stick. Grace passes around some cans of beer and finds a place to wedge the rest behind a rock in the current. The water is cool and clean and she kneels there letting it slip across her skin. Behind her Sheldon and Clara undress and giggle and wade into the stream like some unrepentant missionaries stumbling to a baptism. She watches them, their nudeness. Asses glow bright as orbs. Grace strips as well, tells them to cover eyes and no peaking and soon she’s submerged in the pool, hair spilling like thread and floating the surface of water. Shadows cast from clouds glide slowly across them like fresh bruises.

Clara tells them about growing up in Gainesville. About being a suburban kid and living a cul-de-sac life. Of pool hopping at night. She tells them about streaking naked through lawns and scaling fences. Of the time she dove over the murky outline of an alligator, eyes yellow and barely slit.

“I remember a strange feeling of sadness,” she says. “This ancient thing below like some cheap inflatable, and me just floating stupidly above.” She pauses, waits. “And then…”

She gives Grace a pinch, the act of gnashing teeth splitting skin. Grace lets out a high bark. She pushes a wave of water at Clara and soon they’re all splashing together and shaking the wet from faces and hair. She makes her way back to the bank and lounges in the sun to dry. Stretches legs and arms and boundaries and watches the silver canopy of foliage shift above. She listens to Sheldon and Clara, his talk of shaping the earth. The need to replicate himself outward, to inhabit other spaces.

Clara mentions lawnmowers and clippers. The act of trimming grass and hedges and ornamental shrubs.

“It’s the ritual of self,” she says. “Taming the yard. The fertilizers and aeration and leaves raked and burned like sacred pyres. Our borders reinforced, all that shit.” 

“Nature at bay,” he says. “Fear of the sublime.”

“You got it, mister.”

Grace pulls on her clothes, sunbaked and stiff, the heat pleasant on her skin. She asks about the trail beyond and how far it runs and Sheldon mentions an old fire tower a few miles ahead. She gives Clara a glance, checks in, says she’ll go for a little walk. Before leaving, Sheldon tells her to grab something for the road, something to raise her spirits, and she finds a bag of mushrooms tucked into the pocket of his shorts. Helps herself to some caps and stems.

She makes her way through oak and eastern pines. Swaths of ferns blanket the ground. At a little creek she bends to cup some water to face and neck, feels it weave in little trails down her back. The sun is dipping low and she nibbles at the mushrooms, imagines she’s a deer. Wary and twitchy. Spring loaded and ready to run. A little later she spots the fire tower rising over a small knoll, all steel and beam and built as if from some child’s erector set. Open steps thread the center of the structure and rise vertical, angled like lightning strikes. At the base she runs her hands along the supports. They are rough and pocked from years of weather. She watches the trees around her. They begin to sway and swish and bend to her lips, leaving behind softly needled kisses. Perched atop the tower is the lookout shelter and she starts to climb. The steps feel endless and echo footfalls and she pulls herself higher until finally there and stands for minutes or hours or days letting the air flow in and out of lungs. Around her are the blank spaces where panes of glass once filled, framing the expanse beyond. Hills roll like waves and crash into larger masses that rise into the darkening pink sky. Clouds begin to ripen. She wonders about Clara and sends a text that comes back undeliverable. She tries to connect, to refresh. She feels herself begin to shake and wishes for fire. Something to warm. Wood planks line the floor and she imagines setting them aflame. Imagines the heat and smoke and sending signals back to the tribe. She can feel herself slipping and opens the flashlight on her phone. The room glows soft and Grace takes to the floor, the phone near and to her chest and beaming on the ceiling above. Little pixels dance in the shadows and she smiles thinking of all the primitives before. Thinking of them left to their own devices.  

She wakes sometime later. There is singing or music or both, rising and falling on the breeze. She reaches for her phone in the dark. The power has been sapped and she rubs the screen like some worry stone or Baoding ball. She taps and holds the home button hoping for some light. Distant voices carry in the night. Grace cups her ear and listens and wonders if their sound is real. She remembers reading once about wandering native spirits. Of strange visits by gliding squaws and slain warrior chiefs. She can hear a guitar and now a bit of laughter. Someone calls her name and she worries about tricksters. Of ghosts in the night. She palms her phone and begins humming OMmmOMmmOMmm. She kneads at the case for heat and friction and charge. She thinks of survival techniques, of snakebites and tourniquets. She thinks of stop, drop, and roll and to stay below the smoke. To tell someone you trust. She watches a satellite glide across the sky and then accelerate and then disappear and wonders how many signals are drifting from its wake. If they’re bringing her connections. From somewhere but much closer now she hears her name Grace called again. She doesn’t move. She becomes still and quiet and wraps herself tight. She readies for the rainfall of frequencies, for the wavelengths pouring down and into the night.

Nathaniel Eddy lives and works in Philadelphia. His work has recently appeared in Ember Chasm Review and Longleaf Review and nominated for 2019 Best of the Net.